


One Step Forward

by entanglednow



Series: Milkshakes and Matchsticks [5]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Awkwardness, Dating, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-11
Updated: 2012-09-11
Packaged: 2017-11-14 00:38:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/509467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles doesn't want to look like he's trying if Derek's just going to turn up in the last clothes he got stabbed in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Step Forward

Stiles has a date. One he actually knows about this time.

It turns out to be so much more stressful when you're aware of it. Last time he'd just thrown a clean hoodie on and driven into town. Clearly that had worked in some way, or Derek wouldn't have said yes to another one. But Stiles suspects that's the kind of magic that only works if you don't know about it. He has officially used his get out of jail free card. Or in this case his, impress the hot guy without trying, card.

So far Stiles has resisted the urge to text Scott and tell him that he has a date with Derek. Because he senses that will be a conversation he doesn't want to have while he's surfing the fine edge of not freaking out, and freaking the hell out. No matter how much he sort of wants to, because seriously, he managed to get a date with _Derek_. Though he suspects Scott wouldn't be half as impressed by that as he is. Scott would be so far from impressed, and there would shouting and accusations. Because Scott doesn't trust Derek, and Derek doesn't trust anyone, and Stiles is completely ok with putting that off until another time.

Seriously, though, the one time Scott owes him for all those awkward Allison conversations, freak-outs and moments of dire, interspecies, romantic pain, and Stiles can't collect on any of them. This is vexing. He's completely on his own, fine, no problem, he can do this. It will not be a humiliating disaster. And why the hell did he even think the words 'humiliating disaster?' That's like punching fate in the nuts, and then running away or something.

It might be helpful to know what's actually showing, to save the half an hour of awkward indecision where they try and work out if their movie interests are even remotely similar. Stiles pulls his desk chair out, opens his laptop and checks.

\- Movie about a woman that talks to her dead family because she's sad - just _no_. Oh my God, a whole entire world of no.

\- Romantic comedy about people who meet and hate each other, only to have a series of unlikely adventures before they end up together at the end of the movie. Stiles has no idea why they're so popular, they're completely unrealistic. Ugh, not even if Derek was a girl. No.

\- Depressing movie based on a real life person - most of which they probably made up, so it's guaranteed to annoy the hell out of fans, and bore the crap out of everyone else. No.

\- Stop-motion animation with dinosaurs - Stiles is so freakin' tempted, just for the look on Derek's face. No. A reluctant no, but a no, nonetheless. Scott might like it though, Scott likes dinosaurs. He's going to make a note of that for Scott, in case he needs cheering up at some point in the future. When the on again/off again Allison romance is in an off phase probably. Or possibly to cushion the blow of the whole 'hey, so me and Derek totally went on a date,' conversation. Stiles thinks maybe he's going to need dinosaurs on his side for that one.

\- Dark, comic-noir superhero movie, that looks amazing - and is rated R - which, yeah, that might be a problem. Maybe?

\- Brainless sci-fi blockbuster with aliens and explosions. Maybe?

Is four hours until he has to meet Derek too early to decide what to wear? It'll be one less thing to stress about, if nothing else.

Stiles digs in his wardrobe for all the things that are clean and don't have holes in, or blood stains on. Seriously, the number of clothes he now owns with blood stains on has grown exponentially since he started hanging around with werewolves.

He doesn't want it to look obvious that he thinks it's a date, even though it is - though, no, Derek totally knows it's a date so he can look obvious if he wants to. But not desperate. Casual and obvious, but not desperate. No, hang on, why does he want to look _obvious_? No one wants to look obvious. He could just wear what he normally wears. Derek will probably wear what he normally wears too. Because Derek has no other clothes. Derek is like a spectrum of black and grey. Stiles doesn't want to look like he's trying if Derek's just going to turn up in the last clothes he got stabbed in. Which - yeah, Derek is lucky that he's hot, and sort of heroic, and Stiles already knows that he's a social disaster, because if anyone else tried to do the whole bloodstains-are-acceptable-for-a-date thing, then Stiles would taser them.

So, normal clothes. Derek has seen him in normal clothes, Derek has clearly already judged him acceptable in his normal, everyday, person clothes. If Stiles puts on special clothes everything will suddenly be weird and uncomfortable, because it will just bring attention to the fact that the situation is completely and obviously not-normal. He doesn't want to do that. No, he'll be fine in something he's worn before, something that's clean and doesn't look too rumpled, and that won't make him look like he's twelve years old in semi-darkness. That'd be good.

It's not like he's a girl, he doesn't have to worry about hair, or make-up, or if his shoes match his ears. Because all of his shoes match his ears. His ears are fine. Why the hell is he suddenly worrying about his ears?

Stiles really wants to text Scott. Because Scott would tell him to shut up about his ears, with that dorky look on his face. He seriously thinks about texting him anyway, making something up, some sort of reason. Or he could just tell him he has a date and fudge the details a little. Just so Scott could ramble on at him for half an hour, because Stiles could do with a little of that right now. Also, he sort of misses the time when Scott's problems were easy to solve, or at least involved fewer dead bodies.

He should shower.

 

*****

 

His dad looks at him, sitting there in his moderately nice, non-blood-stained clothes, knee twitching, keys jiggling restlessly in his left hand, eyes jumping between the clock and his phone.

"Going out tonight?" he asks. Because he has a keen, cop mind which notices things.

Stiles looks at the minute hand on the clock again, which has been stubbornly refusing to move for the last ten minutes at least.

"Oh, y'know, nowhere special, movies, maybe," he rambles out, slightly too fast. He may also be trying so hard for relaxed nonchalance that he's about to slip sideways off his chair.

"Uh huh," his dad says, and Stiles pretends he hasn't just completely failed at subtlety.

But because his dad is awesome, he doesn't ask any of the obvious questions. Even though he looks like he really wants to.  Stiles doesn't think he could cope with any of the questions his dad wants to ask right now, so he tries for a smile and some sort of responsible-teenager look. Which, honestly, he has no clue what that even looks like, because he doesn't know any responsible teenagers to copy one from. He's mostly guessing.

"Well, try not to be back too late." His dad gives him a meaningful head nod.

"I will do that, the not-late thing," Stiles assures him. Because unless somehow monsters become involved he'll probably be back before midnight. He really hopes monsters don't become involved.

"And have a good time." That's clearly supposed to be reassuring, as is the hand that presses down on his shoulder. It seems to be saying 'take a breath.'

Stiles nods jerkily. His knee is jiggling impatiently again and he can't get it to stop. This is stupid. He's been out with Derek loads of times, sometimes to actually kill things, or at least maneuver himself into some sort of harm's way so Derek could kill things. He's been hunted by a kanima. Stiles has been less nervous when they were going out to fight random supernatural monsters, than he is right now. In what universe is that fair. He tells himself, again, that nothing that's going to happen tonight could be worse than being tortured, murdered and eaten by rogue werewolves.

Probably.

 

*****

Stiles waits outside for twenty minutes. Which is his own fault because he's super early. But that doesn't stop him from going through some sort of terrifying emotional crisis, most of which keeps coming back to Derek not showing up, or texting him and cancelling the whole thing. Because that's a thing that happens to people all the time. Normal people who are all the same species, with no issues at all. Stiles knows he can't make this into a thing, he can't make this into a _Lydia_ thing. Because Stiles talks too much, and Derek barely talks at all, and at some point Derek is going to notice that he's sixteen and still thinks bendy straws are pretty amazing. They really only have the mutual life-saving, and Scott's problems in common anyway. God, striking out with people his own age is crushing enough, what does he even think he's doing here?

But then suddenly Derek is just _there_ , standing in front of him, like he appeared out of nothing, or more likely out of the head of some sort of Greek god - it has to be Greek, because of all the tragedy.

"Oh my God, what have I told you guys about the appearing thing, don't do that to me." Stiles's heartbeat is about twenty percent fear and eighty percent relief at this point.

It takes him a second to notice that Derek's wearing a dark blue t-shirt, that doesn't look as though anyone was murdered in it. It doesn't even look faded, or even lightly rumpled. Derek may have actually gone through his wardrobe and decided he didn't have anything nice enough to wear, and so he actually went out and bought clothes. Stiles isn't sure if he wants to freak out more or less with that piece of information. He wants to tell Derek he looks nice, because he does. It's pretty fair to say that Derek looks nice all the time, but tonight he looks especially nice, like maybe he was thinking about looking nice, and not just relying on his natural genetic hotness, and scary werewolf presence. But Stiles isn't sure if you're allowed to tell a guy that he looks nice, or whether that's just a girl thing. Also Derek is already somewhere between frown and glare, as if he has no idea what he's supposed to be doing, or maybe he's rethinking the whole thing. Stiles thinks maybe it's been a while for him. A really long while. Which helps, a little bit.

"You look nice." Stiles hears himself say, and it comes out a little surprised, possibly because he was holding it in so hard. It's like the words were determined to escape while he wasn't paying attention, whether he wanted them to or not.

Derek gives him a weird, confused sort of look, he clearly has no idea what to say to that.

"Thanks," he says awkwardly.

Stiles is officially an idiot, and that's probably the least embarrassing thing he's going to do tonight. It's times like this that he wishes real life had checkpoints, so you could reload and try things again if you messed them up. Real life is harsh, because real life is one-hit-kill all the time. Stiles is pretty sure trying to do this without a series of helpful checkpoints is going to end badly, but he's here now, they're clearly doing this.

"So, I guess we should go in," Stiles suggests, because that's what people do. When they go to movies. They _go_ to the movies. They do not stand outside, the movies do not come to them. Derek looks at him like he might have to fight some sort of, as yet unknown supernatural menace in there (or like maybe he'd prefer to fight some sort of, as yet unknown supernatural menace rather than sit next to Stiles for two hours in the dark.) Stiles would tell him to chill out, if he didn't suspect he was wearing the same expression.

There is no supernatural menace inside, Stiles isn't sure whether he's relieved or not. At least when Derek is savaging something he knows what to do. Which is usually get shoved out of the way, until some opportunity to hit something with a fire extinguisher arises. There's one on the wall, so they're all good if the guy selling the tickets turns into a vampire and tries to kill them. Which he shows no sign of doing so far.

He should see what Derek wants to see, that's a proper date thing, right? You choose the movie together.

Stiles clears his throat.

"Do you have any preference for -"

Derek's already shaking his head stiffly, so Stiles just picks the one with space and explosions and buys the tickets. He figures he's the one who invited Derek out so he's going to pay. And there's no way he's sitting in there for two hours without snacks, whether the prices are insanely jacked up or not. He doesn't know whether Derek will want popcorn or not. It would probably damage his reputation in some way to get popcorn all over his monster-fighting leather jacket, and sugar all over his jeans. But Stiles decides, fuck it, of course he's going to want food, he's a werewolf. Scott's appetite is like three times what it was, and he'll eat anything now. So he just get two of the biggest sizes they have.

"You're going to eat all of that?" Derek says dubiously, and Stiles thinks there's a crack in there somewhere about his eating habits. But he's a teenage boy, and he's pretty sure he's actually going to be taller than Derek in roughly three months. So he's going to have as many damn delicious snacks as he wants.

"Dude, no, that's yours." He passes one of the buckets over, and Derek takes it with a sort of bewildered confusion that seems to say no one's ever bought him food before.

Stiles waits to see if it sinks in - it doesn't look like it's happening.

"Do you want a drink?"

"What?"

"A drink," Stiles jiggles his own until it sloshes. "Do you want a drink?"

Derek shakes his head. He looks like he's not sure if he wants the popcorn.

"It's fine, if you don't want it, I'll eat them both." Stiles reaches over.

Derek curls a lip at him, and pulls it back out of range.

"Hey, no snarling at the guy who buys you snacks," Stiles grumbles. Because that is so rude, and Derek is amazingly lucky that Stiles is used to him being a crazy person with no manners, at all. Because he was raised by actual wolves.

Derek's got this look on his face now, like he knows he fucked up, and has no idea how to fix it. So Stiles solves the awkward moment of crisis by just pushing him in the general direction they need to go. Towards darkness and also hopefully a semi-entertaining two hundred and ten minutes. Or however long the movie actually is, he forgot to look.

Though Derek still looks horrible once Stiles gets him inside. His free hand is clenched at his side, and his eyes are picking up every bit of movement. Anyone would think he'd never been in a movie theatre before - holy crap, he's never been in a movie theatre before.

"You can sit wherever you like," Stiles says helpfully.

"I knew that," Derek's voice is tight. He really needs to work on that defensive thing.

"Did you, did you really?" Stiles teases, because, hey, they're on a date, he totally can. Oh my God, they're on a date, how the hell did this happen, seriously?

Derek looks like he's thinking about kicking him down the steps.

Stiles waves an arm towards the many, empty rows and Derek glares at him, and then picks one at random, at the back, near the exit, possibly because it feels more lurky and he can glare at people without them noticing. Stiles isn't going to educate him when it comes to seating arrangements, he just drops himself down next to him. They're actually pretty lucky because the movie's been out a while, and the place is nearly empty. They can talk if they want to, without people glaring and shushing them. Stiles doesn't think Derek would take well to being glared at, or shushed by random strangers.

"You know why I picked this movie right?"

"Yeah, because you couldn't get into the R," Derek says, and then visibly winces, as if he'd been trying not to think about how young Stiles was.

"Oh my God, shut up. Mr I've-never-been-to-a-movie-before."

Derek glares at him over his popcorn. But, yeah, Stiles has his answer.

"I picked it because it has space and explosions. Who doesn't like space and explosions?"

"I don't care," Derek says. In such an unbelievably flat tone of voice that Stiles figures he might as well just add 'about anything,' to the end of that sentence.

Stiles feels like he's already fucked this up, though he's not sure how exactly. He's about to say something about how they can still do something else, if Derek doesn't want to see a movie. Stiles is mostly just working with what normal people do here, when they're interested in spending time with each other. But Stiles's disappointment must have shown in his face, or maybe he smelled of it, or _something_. Because Derek does that mouth tightening thing, and looks like he wants to kick himself.

"It's fine, whatever, I'll see whatever. Space and explosions are fine." It's not exactly a ringing endorsement, but Derek seems to be attempting to relax, which he's not very good at. But he's _trying_. Though he ruins it a second later by glaring at his popcorn like he thinks it might be poisoned.

"It's not poisoned, eat it," Stiles grumbles. He's already fist deep in his own.

The trailers start, and Stiles is watching them and not Derek, but he can hear the crunching beside him, that tells him the werewolf has succumbed to instinct and tasty calories.

There's a lot of portentous voiceover, and long shots of spaceships. Stiles isn't sure any of it makes any sense. There's the slim chance it's not supposed to make sense.

It's very strange sitting next to Derek in the dark without anyone bleeding, or talking about rogue Alphas, or being yelled at. Until Stiles remembers _why_ he's sitting next to Derek in the dark, and then his heartbeat does this weird surprised-panicked flail inside his chest, and then has to take a second to slow down again. Only then he can't stop thinking about it, and it keeps doing it. He's pretty sure Derek can hear it, even over all the spaceship noises and portentous voiceover, which is _still_ going on ten minutes in.

Stiles wishes he could hear Derek's heartbeat, which would tell him _something_. Scott has been using that as an all-purpose magic eight ball since he got turned, and the one time Stiles really needs it Scott's not here. Though he has a horrible feeling Derek's heartbeat would be slow and unaffected. It would be a manly heartbeat, that probably only sped up for things like fighting, and getting really angry, and jerking off - and Stiles _really_ needs to stop thinking about Derek jerking off _._ But his heartbeat is probably slow as hell, since they're not currently being attacked or anything. He's probably bored even - no, please let him not be bored, Stiles really hopes he isn't bored.

He tries to subtly get a good look at Derek, to see if he looks bored or not.

"What?" Derek says, sharp and annoyed, because werewolves are awesome at ruining everyone else's stealth attempts.

"I was just looking," he says, which sounds kind of awful come to think of it, after he'd kicked himself earlier about not looking obvious and everything. He's about to clarify, but Derek's mouth looks as if it's trying to appear less angry and more relaxed, so maybe he's just going to leave it as it is.

Derek's leather jacket keeps squeaking every time he moves his arm to shove popcorn in his mouth. Then the squeaking is replaced by crunching. This is officially the loudest Derek has ever been, and it's hilarious. Stiles can't help it, he's laughing quietly into his drink.

"Shut up," Derek says, because he knows, he must know.

"No, watch the spaceship crash," Stiles insists. Because that's exactly what it's doing.

It crashes into a planet. The planet, which they've just been told is made entirely of ice and metal, blows up in spectacular fashion, there's planet shrapnel and space flames everywhere. Even Michael Bay couldn't have blown the planet up harder than that. Stiles is a little embarrassed for it, if he's being honest.

"Wow, I think the science advisor on this movie may have been Scott," Stiles says seriously.

Derek makes a surprised, breathy sort of noise beside him, that he thinks might actually be a laugh.

"Does Scott like explosions?"

"Scott loves explosions, Scott is a huge fan of things exploding when they shouldn't, seriously, chairs, fridges, national monuments - all way more incendiary than you'd think." Stiles bites down on his straw and nods.

Derek is almost definitely laughing. Stiles takes a sneaky look, because he kind of wants to see what that looks like. But Derek's stealthy with his laughs and it's gone before Stiles catches it. He's not glaring though, he's actually almost-smiling, and _holy crap_ , Derek doesn't even look like Derek any more. Stiles grins back at him like a idiot, which is probably not flattering.

The chief engineer of the second, damaged spaceship is now dying of radiation poisoning in a very dramatic way. Which involves lots of flailing across the controls, leaving blood and bits of his skin behind. This movie is kind of hilariously awful. Not like Sharktopus levels, granted, but honestly nothing reaches that level of hilariously awful. He would say as much but he's pretty sure Derek has never seen Sharktopus - which Stiles is now determined to correct at some point in the future.

"Hey, could you heal yourself from radiation poisoning?" Stiles asks, when he can talk around the amount of popcorn in his mouth.

"I have no idea. I wouldn't want to test it though. You do know your skin falls off." Derek points at the movie, and Stiles is snorting into his coke in a really messy, obvious sort of way, and _oh my God_ he literally can't go ten minutes without doing something ridiculous and embarrassing.

"Probably not immediately," he manages, while trying to subtly wipe up the spillage with his sleeve.

"I'm not up for my skin falling off at any point," Derek says flatly. "Nothing is worth whatever is happening to that guy."

The scientist now appears to be melting into the floor.

"Not even if you got to be an astronaut?" Stiles offers. "I mean sure, he's melting, but he's melting _in space_."

"Not even if I got to be an astronaut." Derek says it like it's not even a thing. Like the word 'astronaut' doesn't even register with him as something anyone would want to be.

Stiles shakes his head.

"I'm officially disappointed in you. Though, y'know, the minute you got angry you'd claw out, and it would tear your suit - and then you'd die horribly in the vacuum of space, which would be pretty awful. So maybe werewolves just weren't meant to go into space."

"You've thought about this haven't you?" Why does Derek sound so surprised, does he not know him at all?

"I think about everything. Man, you really weren't one of those kids that was obsessed with space were you? I thought everyone went through a space phase. I don't know if I even like you any more."

Derek huffs something that's either amused or offended. Stiles is too busy drinking to tell.

The unlikely explosions, and death by melting, die off in favour of more dialogue, which continues to barely makes sense. They obviously just found some science words they liked the sound of, and then peppered them through the script. But at least the spaceship looks cool, even if it was obviously built by someone that was clearly insane - and probably not even a scientist.

"That is a great spaceship," Stiles decides.

"Too many spikes," Derek says, because he doesn't know how to like things.

"It's space," Stiles tells him. "You don't have to worry about drag, they can have as many spikes as they want."

"They reached the point where they should have said enough, and went past it," Derek points out, which is kind of true.

"Yeah, but no one's going to say 'your spaceship is trying too hard.' Actually I want to say it's compensating for something but I can't get that to work with the spikes, because what the hell would you even be compensating for with spikes?"

Derek's doing the almost-smiling thing again.

Stiles shoves popcorn in his mouth, just in case he says something stupid and ruins it.

The scientists in this movie are morons. Stiles is pretty sure the whole movie would have been ten minutes long if they stopped touching things, going insane, and wandering off alone. When the aliens show up, it's almost a relief, and at least they're fairly decent CG aliens. Though clearly this movie feels the same way about tentacles as they do about spikes. There can never be enough.

"Why do the aliens always come for our water? Did they not notice the billion or so tonnes of it in the rest of the solar system."

"Maybe they're just dicks," Derek offers.

Stiles doesn't think he's joking, he's just being Derek, but he still inhales popcorn trying not to laugh, and then half-chokes on it until his eyes water. He has to drink a quarter of his coke before he can breathe again.

Derek's watching him, and Stiles isn't surprised, because he's already eaten all of his popcorn, and so he's probably dying of dehydration right now.

"I knew you should have gotten a drink," he says, and offers his own over.

Derek immediately tugs it out of his hand, shoves the straw in his mouth and finishes the whole thing, like the bottomless pit he clearly is.

"There was like half of that left," Stiles grumbles, and flicks popcorn at Derek's face. The kernel hits him in the throat, and then tumbles down his t-shirt like the world's least threatening piece of shrapnel. "Ugh, you're the worst date ever."

Derek looks genuinely hurt for a second, and then it's gone. He's staring at the movie again, frown wearing what looks like a painful groove in his face. It's like they've fallen into a parallel universe where Derek actually gives a shit what Stiles thinks. Which he should probably be happy about, but the fact that Stiles is even capable of making Derek look like that, just by saying something stupid - he says stupid things all the time.

Stiles jostles him with an elbow.

"Dude, no, I like that you kind of fail at this. Because usually I'm the one that's getting everything wrong, and completely humiliating myself. I like this, I could totally get used to this."

Derek glares at the huge screen, and then sighs through his nose. Stiles gets the feeling that he in no way made that better.

He dumps a handful of his popcorn in Derek's empty bucket. Because that's like a werewolf apology isn't it? He nudges him with an elbow again, and Derek stops looking quite so much like Stiles stamped on his puppy. Or maybe Derek's the puppy in this scenario. Stiles genuinely doesn't know. But eventually Derek thaws out again, like the big glacier he is, and lets Stiles lean on his arm, without making any scary, werewolf noises in his throat. Stiles grins at him, and puts his feet up on the back of the empty chair in front of him, and watches the rest of the movie, while stealthily redistributing popcorn, and bemoaning the lack of proper science in all of the explosions. Derek does the almost-smiling thing again.

It's an awful movie, but Stiles really, really doesn't care.

They wander out afterwards, without talking, trash thrown away, sugar dusted off of fingers. Derek pushes his fists into his pockets, suddenly a lot less relaxed once they're standing outside, and Stiles knows he needs to do something to halt that slow, tightening of muscle. Before Derek is all scowl and walls again.

"Thanks," Stiles says, and he doesn't realise how much he'd wanted to say it until it's out. "For saying yes, for agreeing to come. I mean, I've never really done this before, and I wasn't sure if you would say yes, and really you didn't have any reason to." Stiles shuts up and bounces on his toes, because he really doesn't need to take the conversation in that direction. "It was good, I mean not the movie, that was kind of terrible, but the you part, that was fun, and different in a good way, so, umm, thanks." It occurs to him that he's talking like this isn't ever going to happen again, and the moment he realises it he feels a little bit awful. Not surprised, but still a little bit awful.

"No one ever asked me before," Derek says stiffly, and he's staring at Stiles like he still can't quite figure out why he did. Which is insane. Stiles wants to ask him if he knows how insane that sounds - because Derek is still making it sound like no one would ever want to.

"Is that why you said yes when I asked?" Stiles is genuinely curious now, because he still doesn't really know why Derek said yes to a date with _him_ , or why he'd even taken him out for a milkshake in the first place. He'd been too afraid to question it. Stiles knows what happens when you ask too many questions. Eventually you get answers you don't want. But he thinks if he doesn't ask the questions now it's going to hurt more later. "Look, I totally understand if you don't like - if you just want to do normal things, for a change. If you just want someone to hang out with. I won't make it something it isn't, if you don't want that. I just don't want to get the wrong impression, because that way lies so much awkwardness, and humiliation. So if you just let me know what this is...." Stiles trails off, shrugs inside his jacket, in a way that probably makes him look young and stupid.

Derek has that pulled-in, confused look to his face. It's the same one he gets when bodies start piling up around him, and he doesn't know what to do. Stiles kind of hates that he put it there this time.

"I don't know what this is," Derek admits, slow and frustrated, like he really doesn't.

Stiles takes a breath.

"Do you want to - do you want to go out again? In a non-platonic, date-like sort of way?" Stiles asks, clumsily. He knows he's pushing a little, but he wants this. So he's willing to brace himself for the possibility of horrible rejection. Because this has the potential to become a thing for him, if it's going to happen again. But it's really, really hard to tell whether Derek is actually having a good time or not.

Derek pulls a face at him, exasperated and not really angry, but _something_. Then he gives a stiff nod.

"With me?" Stiles asks, hopeful, because maybe that hadn't been obvious in the previous question.

Derek's expression is accusing him of being the stupidest man alive now. Stiles is too busy grinning like an idiot to care though. Because that's a yes, Derek wants to go out again, with him.

So, yeah, they're kind of dating now.

 

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [(podfic of) One Step Forward](https://archiveofourown.org/works/523123) by [neverbalance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverbalance/pseuds/neverbalance)




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